MIM assessment of the current stage of struggle

by the International Minister, October 5, 2001

We have noted that a number of important actors on 
the world scene have adopted the pose of "a plague 
on both your houses." No doubt, the instinctive 
first reaction of much of the proletariat used to 
bourgeois repression is to condemn both U.$. and 
Osama bin Laden's terrorism.

Nonetheless, the presence of U.S. special forces 
in Afghanistan and the surrounding of Afghanistan 
by the U.S. Navy and Air Force puts the question 
of the stage of struggle on the agenda. It appears 
to MIM that many have abandoned the lessons from 
Mao Zedong fighting the Japanese imperialists 
without reviewing why they have abandoned them.

The intensification of the ongoing World War III 
against the Third World is clarifying the 
political nature of imperialism. Part of the 
clarity produced by that war should be a sense of 
principal enemies.

It is clear that Uncle Sam intends to refresh his 
collection of global lackeys with some new faces 
and coalitions. Both right opportunists and ultra-
left opportunists may find themselves becoming new 
lackeys.

Ultra-left opportunism may occur when a comrade 
believes he or she has sufficient forces to sweep 
to power with a little help from U.S. 
imperialism's clumsiness.  If in fact those forces 
are sufficient, the reasoning may not be ultra-
left. If however one ends up being a lackey of 
U.$. imperialism, one may find it was ultra-left 
overestimation of one's own forces that caused the 
problem.

In another situation, U.$. fighting may end up 
producing a vacuum that right-opportunists fail to 
take advantage of despite fully having the 
proletarian-led forces at hand.

Mao Zedong knew who his principal enemy was during 
the Japanese invasion and the implications of 
being in that stage of struggle. Those who believe 
another formula is appropriate in this context 
should examine whether their reasoning is 
opportunist or outright revisionist on the one 
hand, or come up with a new analysis for the 
situation today and make it available to the rest 
of the international communist movement.

We believe the U.$. war against the Third World 
presents a challenge that may yet unify the Third 
World proletariat. We are quite certain that the 
demise of Osama bin Laden would not change 
anything in this world. He is not important enough 
that his death would alter the causation of 
violence. The death of U.$. imperialism, however, 
might open the door to something completely new. 
It is possible that the death of U.$. imperialism 
would come about through proletarian 
internationalism and that the action required to 
bring down U.$. terror raised the class 
consciousness of the proletariat sufficiently so 
that it could actually move on to socialism 
globally.

No empire lasts forever even when it has 
superiority in many areas. There comes a break 
point where repression and oppression finally turn 
into their opposite. In 1905, the Russians lost to 
Japan in a war. In 1917, the Russians again lost a 
war, even while the French were busy fighting the 
Germans on the Western front. In 1941, the 
Russians faced the most powerful and undefeated 
land army of all history without so much as a 
Western front held by the French, and still as the 
war ground out, the Russians emerged the victor. 
In that victory, the Russians devised completely 
new weapons including rockets (Katyusha). For this 
reason, we do not believe comrades anywhere should 
despair--in either ultra-left or right opportunist 
forms.